Festivus for the rest of us.

I saw several political trolls claiming that those who are favoring Bernie Sanders for POTUS want free handouts. Seeing people claim this is not only untrue, it’s a lame rebuttal. Especially when I noticed that many of them regularly purchase lottery tickets, which is the same silly notion. Who doesn’t want things for free? It’s been such an effective bait, that there are popular phrases to warn others that free things don’t exist. Most Americans will respond to this bait with, “What’s the catch?”. In reality, the only ones getting free stuff are the big corporations who got bailed out by taxpayer dollars. But as if that wasn’t disgusting enough, they’ve also turned tax loopholing into an olympic-level sport.

So why are the people who object to the corruption and unethical behaviors in our government being identified as people looking for freebies and handouts? A big part comes from where you get your information. If you get all your information from the media, then you’ll know exactly what they want you to know. You’ll believe their agenda as fact. The media consists of TV, radio, newspapers, and the internet. These are mostly privately owned entities that can broadcast whatever they want. Brian Williams was bullshitting us for years before it caught up to him. These are biased sources of information. If you rely too heavily on anything owned by a single media conglomerate, you’re trusting that organization to tell you the truth, even if it’s against their best interests. Sucker.

If you’ve paid attention, there have been a lot of mergers between media giants. The number of people controlling what we watch, hear, and see, is getting smaller. The media giants are getting larger. It’s not Sprint and Nextel. It’s Sprint-Nextel. It’s not Time and Warner Brothers. It’s Time-Warner.

Fortunately, Comcast was shut down by regulation issues before they managed to take over Time-Warner. But Verizon managed to purchase AOL. When I was checking out my options for cable and internet providers in Denver, I was disappointed. I thought moving to a large city would mean more options. It’s disturbing how so few companies have sole coverage of a specific area for utilities. I realize they are legal monopolies and are regulated by the government. I just don’t understand why a company that performs so poorly that they’re basically a joke to their customers is allowed to maintain their monopoly. I’m looking at you, Comcast. The IRS rated higher in customer satisfaction than Comcast. That’s astonishing.

My point is that Bernie Sanders’ supporters are not supporting him because they think they’re going to get something for free. Well, some may be, but they’ll be disappointed, and it will be a good life lesson for them. The other people who are supporting his candidacy know the difference between campaign promises, goals, and reality. We know apes could produce better results than an embarrassing number of our congresspersons. At least they’d show up, and not spend their time playing phone games or surfing porn. We know that in order for the next POTUS to accomplish anything, he or she will have to fight, and compromise.

We know that we’re voting for the person who we believe will fight the present corruption that is murdering our nation. Nothing more, nothing less. If Bernie Sanders as POTUS somehow manages to make state universities free, I’ll be shocked. I have my PhD. I don’t plan on going back to school, but I paid for my own education without the trap of student loans. It’s not a personal issue for me. However, I think it would be awesome if he could pull it off. Not for me, but many others. I don’t have unreasonable expectations of a position that has limited powers to create change. I’m voting for my chosen candidate because I believe he has the same values as me. He is ruled by empathy, as am I. I want my fellow citizens to be happy, healthy, and dignified. I don’t want any Americans to starve, die because they can’t afford medical care, or be denied the basic dignity that makes us proud to be Americans. I’ll be fine regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election. I have the means to emigrate if necessary. I’m voting for you and yours. Not because I’m some altruistic saint. It’s for very selfish reasons. I can sleep when I know there are billions of people around me who have what they need to survive. I’m very tired.